Recognition - Conclusion

It is the prerogative of each state to extend recognition to a new
community. Recognition admits to a state's having an international
personality, yet the tests applied to statehood have often been violated
by the use of constitutional, moral, humanitarian, and other subjective
judgments. The practice of democratic states generally has been to
recognize effective, or de facto, governments; the practice of
undemocratic states, to recognize states espousing the objectives of their
own national policies. Even if popular legitimation by free elections does
not follow their extension of de facto recognition, democracies manage to
live with undemocratic governments that are stable and permanent. States
may withhold or withdraw recognition to punish illegitimate state or
illegal conduct—by the latter, for example, for undertaking
territorial changes by force in violation of the sovereignty of the victim
and of the treaty rights of third parties. It is, of course, possible to
have intercourse on a limited basis with states that are not recognized.
Recognition is an executive act that extends to governments rather than to
persons. Although regional and world organizations have used collective
recognition to admit states to their membership, and thereby recognize
them, unilateral recognition is still practiced.

Belligerent parties seeking freedom from a parent state may be recognized
whenever they have created a new government capable of maintaining order
within its boundaries and worthy of respect from abroad. If the parent
state has stopped trying to impose its authority or has assented to its
loss of sovereignty, recognition may be granted freely. Otherwise
questions of timing and of degree must be weighed carefully by third
parties, lest premature recognition lead to war with the parent state and
belated recognition leads to loss of the friendship and trade of the
victorious belligerents. In this connection it is difficult to improve
upon John Adams's "utterly desperate" formula.
Nevertheless, because insurgency has largely replaced civil wars, the
recognition of belligerency by the United States was rarely accorded
between World War I and World War II and has not been granted since 1945.